Effective Business Development

Posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 4:19 pm.

About Jonathan Lea

Jonathan is a specialist corporate and commercial solicitor who has over 13 years of experience at both large international City firms and smaller practices.
For the last five years Jonathan has worked on a self-employed basis with a network of other independent lawyers focused on serving the needs of entrepreneur-led businesses and startups around the UK and further afield.
If you'd like a competitive quote for any legal work please send an email to the address on the home page. You can also follow Jonathan on Twitter
@jonathanlea

This post summarises a previous seminar I attended (several months ago now) at my last law firm Follett Stock LLP where senior fee earners of the firm shared their knowledge in respect of retaining clients and winning new work.I thought it would be useful to share my note on the seminar as some good points were made which are relevant for both online and offline marketing.

These were considered the key overall points relating to successful business development:

Make sure you spend your time on the right prospects who will require your services or who will be in a good position to refer you to quality sources of work.

Always make an effort to share useful information with your clients, as well as ensure that information relating to business development is shared internally with other colleagues.

Identify who the most influential people are in both your geographic area and industry sector and focus on building relationships with them.

Really get to know your clients well so you are able to identify and even anticipate their key needs.

Never take any client for granted – continuous effort needs to be made in building and developing relationships no matter how long the client has been with the firm.

Develop the practice of co-selling whereby you find more ways to add value to your clients by recommending them to other people, both within and outside the firm, as well as outside the practice of law.

What clients’ want

From experience these were the four key things that clients look for when choosing to appoint a solicitor:

An ability to show genuine empathy and to offer re-assurance and support.

Clarification of their problem(s) and identification of relevant solutions, with the solicitor guiding the client rather than just giving a range of options.

Confidence from the solicitor that they, their firm and their network have the right abilities and track record.

A good understanding of both the client’s industry sector and specific business.

Building good rapport

When looking to develop relationships with possible clients, it is vital to make a good impression at the outset and to build rapport quickly.The following are the key points to bear in mind in this respect

Make sure you shake hands firmly, but not too strongly.

Always smile and give a friendly impression.

Always maintain eye contact, engage with people, be informative, keep nodding when others are talking and ask them the right questions to develop better conversation.

Get the seating in the room right, if you can help it don’t have a table as a barrier between you, sit on a corner if there are just two of you.

Show positive intention.If you think positively about getting work your attitude will rub off in general conversation.

Demonstrate re-assurance and an appreciation and understanding of their problem.

Ensure that you inject rhythm and energy into your conversation, be chatty and don’t leave any gaps.

Massage people’s egos – clients’ will become very responsive if you are a fan of what they do.

Emphasize with people and find things in common.

Research everyone before a meeting and make sure you know as much as possible about their background.

Testimonials

Since we started Gap Year back in 1998 I’ve worked with many lawyers, but found Jonathan to be the best I’ve ever encountered. After several months of hefty bills and not getting anywhere with a big US firm in London, I instructed Jonathan to represent me on the sale of Gap Year to Flight Centre, one of Australia’s largest companies. Straight away Jonathan got to grips with the relevant issues and I was particularly impressed how he formed great relationships with all the parties involved, persuaded the buyer to structure the deal in a simpler, more favourable way, negotiated calmly and forcefully, mediated contentious points and found solutions to previously unresolved problems.

Despite the main parties being interspersed around the world, Jonathan very effectively coordinated everyone and led us to complete the deal within just a month of him picking up the work when previously I feared the sale may never happen. He made what was one of the most stressful and difficult periods of my life a lot easier to endure.